When I proposed in my book The Enemy at Home (newly out in paperback) that America should ally with traditional Muslims to defeat the radical Muslims, some conservatives reacted with amazement. Where, these savants inquired, are the traditional Muslims? Clearly the exposure of some on the right to the Muslim world was limited to the viewing of clips of Bin Laden videos on the Fox News Channel.
Then last October a group of 138 Muslim scholars from diverse schools of thought wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict urging "mutual understanding" between Christianity and Islam. Titled "A Common Word Between Us and You," the letter notes that Muslims and Christians can find shared ground based on the dual commandments to love God and love our neighbor.
"As Muslims," the letter goes, "we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them--so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them, and drive them out of their homes." The letter was carefully worded so that it did not confuse clashes of interests with a war against the Muslim religion. In effect, the Muslim leaders were saying that their religious quarrel is only with atheists and other enemies of Islam.
Liberal Christians reacted to the letter with their usual abasement. Certainly some relief was in order, because Muslims who seek common cause with the West, or at least with the Christian West, are far preferable to those who seek to destroy us. Even so, why are liberal Christians so quick to prostrate themselves? "We want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in the war on terror) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbor...We ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world."
The Vatican, accustomed to dealing with Muslim diplomatic initiatives for centuries, responded with much greater caution. While welcoming the initiative to dialog, the Vatican's Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran stressed that genuine common ground requires reciprocity. So if Muslims want to have full rights of worship in Western countries, they should grant those same rights to Christians in Muslim countries. If Muslims have the freedom to build mosques in London and Chicago, Christians should be able to build churches in Islamabad and Amman.
One group of ignoramuses wants to wage an ideological war against Islam. Another group of sycophants wants to curry favor among Muslims, just so long as they abstain from bombing us. In between these two there is a sensible option: to negotiate respectfully but firmly with traditional Muslims, building on shared values but also insisting that justice and goodwill must come from both sides of the street.
Mo Rocca has appeared on a bunch of shows, including 'The Daily Show,' 'I Love the 80s,'...
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Muslims Who Renounce Violence
Posted Feb 20th 2008 2:02AM by Dinesh D'Souza
Filed under: Terrorism, Islam, Christianity, Islamic Radicals
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Reader Comments ( Page 4 of 35)
46. Botts,
don't take things so personally, guy. if my education and intelligence overwhelm you,
just get over it. if you can't handle two grown men discussing things on this blog: don't read them.
but, i'm glad to see that you'll take up for hays and not for God.
glad to hear that you've had a safe trip over seas.
and, don't forget, tolerance is one thing, but allowing oneself to be walked all over is another...
your question should be with hays: he's the one with the 'problem': remember? HE's the one who wants to stop any believers in any God at all.
Ken at 2:28PM on Feb 20th 2008
47. Okay, I am educated and consider myself intelligent, but I read this article twice and still do not understand the point. Was DD trying to say that there should be peace among Muslims and Christians, but not atheists? Or there should be peace among everyone? Or, peace among Muslims and Christians but not Jews and atheists? I really don't get it. Well, whether you are Christian, Muslim, Jew, Atheist, Buddhist, etc I wish you peace and harmony in your life. When people die they all go to the same place no matter what their belief was.
D at 2:29PM on Feb 20th 2008
48. Well spoken, D. One D is better than Two.
Mokele-Mobembe at 2:37PM on Feb 20th 2008
49. "There's no problem. Hays tells LIES. He doesn't say HE doesn't believe in God, he says there IS no God!"
-------------------------------------------------
Prove him wrong.
Linda at 2:41PM on Feb 20th 2008
50. "There's no problem. Hays tells LIES. He doesn't say HE doesn't believe in God, he says there IS no God!"
YOU don't say you believe in God, you say there IS a God, and you don't see us wetting our pants about it.
AndrewV at 2:50PM on Feb 20th 2008
51. I just like to sit back have a beer and watch all you religious nut jobs get rid of each other.
Larry at 2:55PM on Feb 20th 2008
52. Shannie,
What's wrong with Botts being on the fence. Beliefs are not something to be told, but make no mistake - Beliefs are not something to be chosen.
AndrewV,
Actually I put on diapers every time I log on to AOL, 'cause some of the people here scare the piss out of me!
Mokele-Mobembe at 2:57PM on Feb 20th 2008
53. WTF is Larry talking about?
Linda at 3:08PM on Feb 20th 2008
54. "The pontiff's formal reaction was made public yesterday as the Vatican published his latest encyclical, in which he said atheism had "led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice"."
"The Pope's second encyclical dealt primarily with the Christian understanding of hope. But some passages appeared to be directed at the readers of such bestsellers as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great. Benedict acknowledged that atheism had begun as a "type of moralism", rooted in the idea that a good God could not have made such an unjust world. But he said a "world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope"."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/01/italy.johnhooper
Islamic leaders send letter. Pope replies by demonizing atheists. D'Souza pretends that the letter demonizes atheists. Is D'Souza confused himself or is he trying to be confusing?
I watched an online video an Islamic leader explain that he thought that atheists were easy converts to Islam. Here...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bcfjHNPCOZI
Ya gotta wonder how many atheists are in danger of persecution in Islamic countries if the Pope's view is taken seriously!
This amounts to a hate crime by the Pope himself!
not-pboyfloyd at 3:33PM on Feb 20th 2008
55. ATHEIST
I was trying to make a comment about the battle between Islam and atheists.
The atheists are pro-active.
Atheists say, since god does not exist, then Islam and all other religions that claim knowledge about a "god"... are wrong.
In that sense, Catholicism might want to form a bridge with Islam. Because both are based on a belief in an Imaginary Friend.
Atheists sit back and laugh. It's like watching a toddler learning how to walk. Or, an infant drawing a picture on the floor with his own feces.
The Christian idea of Resurrection is NOT the same as "going to heaven."
The idea of Resurrection is, when you die, you're dead.
Your bones are stored in a box... so God can put flesh on your bones and make you live again.
A scientist KNOWS there is no soul because he's seen how personality breaks down when the brain deteriorates or suffers injury.
Being a christian.... does NOT mean that you think there is a soul.
IF you actually READ the New Testament and understand it.
William Hays at 3:57PM on Feb 20th 2008
56. What kind of beer is Larry talking about? It sounds refreshing.
Hays,
I like the brain-deterioration argument, but it doesn't completely rule out the soul. It may indicate that a person's memories and personality are confined to encoded patterns in the physical brain, and thus knocks away classical notions of souls and ghosts, but it doesn't rule out the prospect that life has a "spiritual ingredient" so to speak.
Mokele-Mobembe at 4:14PM on Feb 20th 2008
57. Well, yeah, Moke, except these folks are talking about a tangible entity that exists after death, not something like "soul searching" or looking for meaning in life.
They're like woooooooo, ghosts and spirits, non corporeal........wooooooooooooooooooooo.
Linda at 4:21PM on Feb 20th 2008
58. As a child I wanted to be a paranormal researcher and hunt for ghosts. The more I think about it, if there ARE ghosts, the only plausible explanations are astronomically unlikely (if you look beyond psychological hallucination). Apparitions are probably just time-traveling visual echoes, where some rare time-space anomaly traps and delays the photons for years before reemitting them. There could be a swarm-intelligence airborne microscopic bio-organism that configures itself into the geometric verisimilitude of animate presences empirically sampled through sonar, which survive to recreate the configuration years after. Maybe there are shapeshifting organisms made of specialized air pockets of gaseous materials, and can only survive and evolve in spaces with atmospheric diversity and negligible airflow. There could be a telekinetic jokester hiding in the next room, who can arrange dust particles into dead people just to scare you. Nevertheless, I'm keeping "See a ghost" on my bucket list.
Mokele-Mobembe at 4:43PM on Feb 20th 2008
59. "As a fellow believer in God, one would think that you'd be defending God." Ken
Ken, God depends on the individuals perspective. Our perceptions is what makes our Reality. Nothing you can say can prove God to William. William has to prove it to himself. If you look at last nights blog, I wrote to William regarding his 1/2 truths and gave him facts to back up my statements.
"Botts...still trying to figure out what exactly you believe... Jesus as savior or something else?" Shannie
I believe in Jesus being our Savior and the last one for us. Before him was Horus. Jesus is the last.
I know God. Through my experiences in my life, I came to know God.
Belief and knowledge are two different things and don't forget it.
Religion is evil. There never was supposed to be religion. Man created this for Control.
Whatever you believe from the Bible and whatever you know from your life, is personal. If someone has questions, you answer them. You can't convert. No matter what you think. People have to find their own calling. If you help with that.....great.
Botts at 5:12PM on Feb 20th 2008
60. "Atheists sit back and laugh. It's like watching a toddler learning how to walk. Or, an infant drawing a picture on the floor with his own feces."
WRONG ANSWER. I've walked in on my kid 'finger painting' with poop and that is not something you sit back and laugh at.
bigTuna at 5:17PM on Feb 20th 2008